How To Show a Promotion or Multiple Positions on a Resume With Examples, Tips, and Guide

Congratulations — you’ve been promoted — maybe several times during your career. Now you can update your resume to show potential employers how you’ve climbed the ladder. Drawing attention to a promotion on your resume demonstrates professional growth. It also shows commitment to achieving goals, interest in continuous improvement, and dedication as an employee. 

This guide will explain different ways to show promotions on your resume, along with formatting tips, mistakes to avoid, and examples of listing promotions on a resume. 

Why It’s Important To Show Promotions on Your Resume

Displaying promotions on your resume demonstrates career growth and showcases increased responsibilities. Employers reward team members with promotions when employees are valuable contributors to the company by exceeding measurables such as sales, profitability, productivity, customer attraction and retention, and client service. Your promotion might have resulted because of one, several, or all of these factors. Let future employers know you’re a career-driven person with a strong work ethic and desire to achieve.

Demonstrating career growth

Promotions on a resume prove career advancement and reflect your value to an employer as a team member who can help an organization compete in the marketplace. Say you were promoted from a sales team member to the sales lead because your efforts increased the company’s annual revenue by 15%. This shows you’re a VIP member of the team who can set an example for other sales associates.

Every employer is looking for team members who can deliver measurable value. Ultimately, they’re making an investment (in human capital) and want to see a healthy return. When noting promotions on your resume, add data, percentages, ratings, and other numbers that tell your success story.

Showcasing increased responsibilities

Earning a promotion is a reward for growing in responsibilities and skills. Climbing the ladder at a company also shows future employers you are a committed, reliable team member. Imagine your web development team rolled out a new application under your guidance that gained 200,000 new users within a week and you were promoted to application development director. This notch-up shows the organization trusts you to be in charge of future revenue-generating projects.

For every promotion, consider what achievements and milestones contributed to an employer’s trust that you can take on even more responsibility. This might include managing projects, improving processes, and achieving other performance goals. Always include metrics to tell the story of the value you bring to an employer.

Different Ways To Show Promotions on a Resume

The way you list promotions on a resume will depend on how many positions you held at a company, whether you made an upward or lateral move, and if you worked at other companies in between the time your current employer hired you back in a higher-level role.

Listing multiple positions under one company

Were the positions you held at a company similar in nature, such as with the same department? For example, say you started as a quality assurance (QA) associate, then advanced to a QA lead, and now serve as the QA director overseeing all product divisions of a food processing company. In this case, stack your job titles.

Stacking job titles on a resume works for showing advancement at an organization. Start with the company name and location as the header. Underneath, list each job title in reverse chronological order and include the dates you held each position.

If you stack job titles, create a single bullet-pointed list summarizing your most impactful contributions (with metrics, of course).

Using a combined section for company and roles

If your promotions took you into different departments or roles of the business, consider instead listing the company and location. Then, follow with bullet points about your current role and accomplishments, your previous role with professional experience points, and so on.

Create separate job entries for each role

Add a separate job entry for each role on your resume if you started your career at a company, pursued a promotion at a different business, and then returned to a promotion at your initial employer.

How To Format Promotions on Your Resume

First, decide whether to stack positions you held at a company under a single header with one bulleted list, stack your titles with a professional experience list for each role, or create separate job entries. Now, address three more important steps to making sure your promotions really shine on your resume.

Reverse-chronological order

Regardless of how you decide to arrange promotions and roles on your resume, list the most recent positions first and maintain a reverse-chronological order format. Hiring managers want to quickly scan your resume, and in a flash, see where you stand today and how you’ve progressed.

Highlight promotions in bullet points

Demonstrate a career climb on your resume by listing how your responsibilities increased and how you earned roles at higher levels in the company’s organizational chart. Also, your first bullet point in each “position section” should explain what accomplishment(s) triggered a promotion. Was it landing a $1-million contract that boosted company revenue by 30% in one year? Or, perhaps your stand-out leadership on a high-stakes project (note the worth) positioned the company as a market leader, and you were responsible. Be specific.

Include clearly positioned dates and titles

To effectively tell the story of your career climb and promotions, your resume should clearly list timelines for each position held. Future employers will look at job timelines and promotion dates as an indication of your commitment to an organization and also how accelerated your path is. For example, hiring managers will see you are a motivated, stand-out professional if you were in a retail associate role for six months before earning a promotion to shift manager and then eight months later to the general manager of a store.

Examples of Showing Promotions on a Resume

Highlight a single promotion, multiple upward moves, internal transfers, or different positions across departments on your resume with these effective formats for telling your career success story.

Example for a single promotion

After making a leap at a company, note this on your resume in a stacked format. Bullet points should focus on work experience and job duties mostly in your current role, since these will showcase a higher level of responsibility and accomplishment.

Example for multiple promotions

A stacked format is also effective for multiple promotions at one company because you can streamline roles in a neat list under the company name and location, followed by the most impactful experiences and accomplishments to gain the attention of hiring managers. Refer to our stacked resume example above for reference.

If your duties and successes in each job role are worth noting with measurables that detail your value, you could choose a main company listing followed by each job title and corresponding bullet points. Refer to our multiple company listing example above for reference.

Resume example for different promotions across departments

Say you changed job roles in the same organization multiple times across departments. This demonstrates you are trusted by your employer as a valuable player; they appreciate your skills and want to retain you. They’re willing and interested in shifting you to different positions. If this describes your career path, go for a resume format that begins with a main company header including location, followed by individual listings for each position held. Refer to the example for multiple promotions above for reference.

Resume example for internal transfers

Maybe your company transferred you from one city to another in a similar role. Or, perhaps you shifted to a same-level position in a different department. Lateral moves also occur when a company goes through a merger. Demonstrate these employment changes within the same organization by grouping together roles in the same department with a stacked style. And separate different departmental positions as with the main company header followed by subtitles for each job role and bullets for each position.

Tips for Effectively Highlighting Promotions

Emphasize accomplishments and increased responsibilities with each promotion you include on your resume, quantifying achievements and impact at every level. Don’t just share duties of your higher-level role, attach each accomplishment to a measure that demonstrates your value. This will show hiring managers why you got the promotion without telling them.

Review the job description you’re applying for and decide which promotions and roles align with the position you’re seeking. Including irrelevant professional experience basically tells a hiring manager, “Better find someone else. I’m doing something different here.”

Here is some specific guidance for highlighting promotions, from focusing on achievements to the importance of consistent formatting.

• Focus on achievements and responsibilities: As you earn promotions at an employer, your responsibilities naturally increase — and so do your impact, the value you bring to the organization, and opportunities for greater achievement. Demonstrate this by emphasizing remarkable wins and tying each to metrics that tell the story with numbers.
• Focus on achievements and responsibilities: Cherry-pick the most impactful achievements and responsibilities that illustrate why you got the promotion without saying so directly. Leave out the mundane job duty-type listings. Focus on revenue-generating, profit-driving, customer-pleasing, and leadership wins, and tie every one of those to a number that proves you actually did it.
• Tailor promotions for the job description: If you’re a hostess who got promoted to front-of-house manager but you’re applying for a job as a retail general manager, think hard about what achievements apply to the job. You’ll need to remove some of those experiences and responsibilities if they do not align with the job description. Show the hiring manager you understand what they need, how you demonstrate value, and what they can expect based on your successes. Use keywords and relevant skills to match the job description — but avoid sounding automated. Do not overuse exact phrases. That looks fake.
• Use consistent formatting: There are multiple ways to format promotions in your resume. Decide on one format and stick to it. Otherwise, your resume will be fragmented and difficult to read by a human, let alone an applicant tracking system (ATS) or online filter. Consistent formatting also ensures a professional, clean appearance.
• Structure your resume: An organized resume that highlights promotions you’ve earned throughout your career shows hiring managers you are trusted by employers and have proven yourself as a driven team member who continues to learn and grow as a professional. However, promotions must be detailed clearly, otherwise, your resume will look cluttered, and future employers will have a tough time tracing your career path. Depending on the types of promotions you have earned, you can stack job entries under one company header or separate positions into separate, reverse-chronological entries under different company headers.
• Leverage promotions in cover letters and interviews: Explain how you earned promotions and achieved measurable success during a job interview. Touch on achievements in your current role, and whenever possible, tie numbers, rankings, or awards to your remarks. Data helps validate your professional experience. Also, consider the role you’re pursuing and the job description so you can tailor your interview conversation to align with the future employer’s expectations. Highlight promotions in cover letters in a similar way, making sure to match your professional experiences and promotions to the job description so your letters are relevant and will gain attention from hiring managers. Avoid boilerplate cover letters with generic commentary about your career or aspirations. Always customize cover letters to suit each role you’re pursuing.
• Continuously review and update your resume: Often we wait to update our resumes until we’re ready to look for a different job. Then it’s a race to gather information and format an impactful document to showcase your career. Instead of this last-minute approach, periodically review and update your resume. As you receive new promotions or experience role changes, add these to your resume and reformat if necessary to stack job titles under a company header.

Additional Resources

Resume templates for multiple positions

• Administrative Resume Examples and Templates
• Customer Success Manager Resume Examples and Templates 
• Data Entry Resume Examples and Templates
• Information Technology Resume Examples and Templates
• Real Estate Agent Resume Examples and Templates

Online tools for resume writing and formatting

• Best Resume Formats
• How To List Work Experience on Your Resume
• What Does the Best Resume Look Like?
• What To Put on a Resume

Career advice articles and job application tips

• Are Resume Templates a Good Idea?
• Career Statements for All Types of Jobs
• Write a Convincing Resume Profile

Andrew Stoner

Executive Resume Writer and Career Coach

Andrew Stoner is an executive career coach and resume writer with 17 years of experience as a hiring manager and operations leader at two Fortune 500 Financial Services companies, and as the career services director at two major university business schools.